1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a cleaning apparatus for removing leaves, stalks, etc. from vegetables and fruit at the time of harvesting. It also relates to an automatic harvester equipped with such a cleaning apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many varieties of vegetables and fruit can be mechanically harvested by automatic crop pickers. However, an automatic picker generally picks not only the vegetable itself, but also some of the stalks and leaves attached thereto. In addition, dead leaves and other debris lying on the ground surrounding the growing plant inevitably get mixed up with the vegetables being picked. Therefore, before the vegetables can be packaged for shipment, they must be cleaned to remove the stalks, leaves, and other unwanted materials.
A variety of cleaning devices for use in cleaning picked vegetables have been developed, but they are generally bulky and not suitable for mounting directly on a harvester. For example, some cleaning devices can only be used in a fixed location, such as in a processing plant. This means that a great volume of unwanted materials must be transported along with the picked vegetables from the fields to the processing plant.